This Service Agreement supports a commercial sustainability initiative commenced by Rural Freight Connections Pty Ltd, matching the requirements of businesses that regularly ship or receive freight with existing transport capacity and assets. Should you proceed with this agreement, we will use your information to contact you from time to time, to maintain a digital model of your freight needs, for matching against our database of transport providers. Upon consideration of the following terms, and your review and acceptance of this agreement, we look forward to working with you to support safety, sustainability, efficiency, and reliability in your business activities.
Definitions
Our, us, we and ourselves means Rural Freight Connections Pty Ltd.
Your and you means the business specified in the 'Business' field of this agreement.
General
Our core service is to connect transport providers with businesses that regularly ship or receive freight, based on a comprehensive freight profile assessment. As such, we are not a Common Carrier and will accept no such liability. Furthermore, we, our employees and associates shall not be liable for any loss, damage, or injury claim, resulting from the failure of any transport provider to provide services described in this or any other agreement, offer, or recommendation, provided as part of our core service, or any supplementary service.
We will provide supplementary business enablement and development services for transport providers, to assist the provider in the operation of their business, but provide these services as a third party to the transport provider. We are not a performance, compliance, or account manager for the transport provider.
We are not a freight broker. We endeavour to connect you with a service provider that will be able to perform the service directly, or as directly as possible, and they will invoice you for the service provided. We do not accept freight in the hope of outsourcing the delivery service to another service provider.
In working with you as either a regular shipper or receiver of freight, we represent you to a transport provider or providers based on your supplied profile or profiles. By submitting this agreement, you agree to keep us informed of changes to your freight profile/s so that we may continue to work, to ensure your freight needs are understood and represented to the most suitable transport providers.
The terms of this agreement may be updated from time to time. By utilising our services, you agree to be bound by this agreement and any terms and conditions published on our website at the time of booking transport or transport-related services through us, or a provider connected to you by us.
Safety
Safety is our number 1 priority. All activities must be taken with due process and the right level of care. This involves, but is not exclusive to:
- Chain of Responsibility (CoR) – all laws in the relevant jurisdiction/s must be adhered to by all parties as part of this agreement. No obligations, responsibilities, or liabilities of either the shipper/receiver, or the freight service provider transfer to us as a result of this agreement.
- Breach of CoR – Witnessing any party breaching CoR, or pressuring any party to breach CoR, requires an immediate cessation of service. Please advise us of any potential/perceived/known breaches so that we may cease the service and advise our stakeholders.
- Driver hours – are integral to freight operations and CoR requirements. Booking timeslots must be adhered to where possible, and loading and unloading operations must be prioritised in order to ensure drivers can operate safely within the limits of relevant legislation.
- Loading and unloading – must be done safely, with all safety policies and procedures adhered to for the shipper, receiver and transport provider. A safe environment to load and unload goods will be required and must be maintained to ensure the safety of the transport provider, their employees and any possible subcontractors. Where policies/procedures conflict, the most conservative (risk-free) policy is to be met.
- Load restraint – must be considered when packaging any material to be offered for transport services, such that it can be securely restrained on or within any vehicle in line with all relevant legislation and/or codes of practice regarding safe load restraint, and the packaging will be suitable to prevent damage to the vehicle, its operator/s, the restraint equipment and any other freight on or within the vehicle.
- Hazard identification – must also be considered, ensuring all freight is clearly marked to identify all hazards and comply with all applicable identification standards, such as, but not limited to, heavy items causing a manual handling hazard, or dangerous goods requiring product-specific identification and handling practices.
For any escalations/non-compliance to the above safety requirements, please contact us via Contact Us.
Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure
Information provided to you by us regarding our operations and matched transport providers may be confidential in nature and, as such, will be regarded as confidential unless:
- the information is freely available to the public by means of our website.
- the information is freely available to the public by means of the transport provider’s website.
- We have advised you in writing that the information is not confidential.
You, your employees and associates agree to:
- keep confidential, all ideas, processes, techniques, information, and technical know-how, employed and/or utilised by us, whether provided in writing, through discussion, or any other means.
- keep all confidential information securely, in order to safeguard it from unauthorised access.
- return or destroy any and all stored copies of confidential information when it is no longer required for the service of this agreement.
- notify us if you suspect that a breach of confidentiality has occurred.
The obligation to maintain confidentiality survives the termination or expiry of this agreement.
Non-Circumvention
The time taken to locate and onboard clients to transport providers can be considerable. Likewise, the time taken to find a suitable transport provider to meet the bespoke needs of shippers and receivers can also be considerable. The costs associated with doing so in an active fashion can be prohibitive to many small businesses.
To protect the investment made by us:
- You, your employees and associates agree that you will not solicit or approach any transport provider introduced or referred to you by us concerning or in connection with any proposed or possible arrangement or scheme that in any way competes with or is detrimental to a negotiation or existing agreement between us and the introduced or referred transport provider/s.
- In the event that you decide to discontinue services with us, you, your employees, and associates agree that you will not solicit or approach any transport provider introduced or referred to you by us for a period of not less than 12 months from the date that you advise us of the discontinuation of services.
Commercial and Other Arrangements
Once this agreement has been submitted, we will provide you with recommendations of suitable transport providers and details of their service offerings, including the cost of such service offerings. Should you wish to utilise any of these service offerings, you will need to set up an account with the relevant transport provider/s, authorising pass-through bookings by us on your behalf, prior to operationalisation.
Although there is no current charge to you as a freight consumer for our service, there is a cost for our service that will be incurred by the transport provider.
- The transport provider will invoice you directly and supply a copy of the invoice to us at the same time.
- We will then invoice the transport provider based on the service agreement between the transport provider and ourselves.
- The transport provider/s that we introduce to you will have their own:
- terms and conditions that should be considered independently of this agreement and our terms and conditions.
- credit/account application process that will be considered independently of this agreement and may be rejected by the transport provider at their discretion.
- pricing schedule and commercial terms that they will update from time to time.
- transport booking and tracking service offering, which we consider when matching you.
- Bookings should not be made until goods are ready for collection. Detention charges may be applied if vehicles are unreasonably delayed, as per the transport providers’ terms and conditions, and commercial terms.
Any customer-specific due diligence processes – for example, Safety, Legal and Financial - remain your responsibility. We recommend that you conduct your own checks that are in accordance with your own due diligence requirements.
